I think we've all had our misguided WR hopefuls, and Aromashadou was a big one. Mine was Brandon Rideau. Hopefully, B-Marsh and Alshon will erase some of that.

Who remembers David Ball? I actually emailed their athletic department and got them to send me his highlight tape

Ugh. I wonder who the last WR on the roster is going to be this year. Everybody will complain how imperative it will be for him to make the roster and then he will do nothing. Like Dane Sanzenbacher last year. The sky was going to fall if that guy didn't make the roster...

Oh, and it's always somebody with little to no special teams value, too, and nobody can figure out why the better special teamer is higher on the depth chart._________________

Rotoworld.com wrote:

...internet mock drafts, which have ridiculously become the measuring stick for where players are "supposed" to go.

This is just speculation, but perhaps Carimi is just staying away to buy time to get as healthy as possible. OTAs are voluntary after all, and it's not like a 100% healthy Carimi doesn't have a fair shot at beating out the guys who are competing for backup spots.

Chicago Tribune reported just that, and was cited in NFL.com.

Quote:

The former first-round pick has been spending his days at the O-Line Performance Academy in Arizona, a clinic run by former Pro Bowl lineman LeCharles Bentley.

"Any time a player opts to make an investment in himself that is outside the scope of what the team expects, that's a gamble," said Bentley, according to The Chicago Tribune. "That's sometimes a risk that players have to be willing to take. Sometimes, when guys are in a situation like Gabe, maybe the player feels comfortable betting on himself.

"Now, where it gets a little sketchy, you can't go back and be OK. You can't go back and be good. You've got to go back and be damn good. That's where the pressure falls back onto the player and, to be quite frank, that is where it belongs. Let these guys stand up and man up for themselves. These are their careers. If Gabe Carimi is going to be labeled as a bust, let this man do it on his own terms."
Pick Six
San Francisco might play host to Super Bowl L. What are some of the other options for cities to be first-time hosts for the Super Bowl? More...

Carimi has history with Bentley, who trained him in the months before the Bears used the 29th overall pick to secure his services at offensive tackle in the 2011 NFL Draft. He bounced from right tackle to guard last season, and is not guaranteed a job on a Chicago offensive line that's been revamped through free agency and the draft.

"Gabe is, I think, exactly where he needs to be in terms of the mental state," Bentley said. "There are so many different layers to this thing. He is that point, 'I want to fight. I want to play and I want to show people that I can be a first-round talent that I was drafted as. I'm not going to leave my career as a bust.'

"He's hungry to prove people wrong and has taken time and work for him to get to this point mentally and physically. He is light years from where he was."

We'll find out if that's enough to give him a chance at a redemptive season at Soldier Field.

If he is working on gaining strength and speed back, and is working to get back to the player he was suppose to be, I don't worry too much about him missing the voluntary camps. Kromer will get him up to speed and it is not like he won't be able to review calls, protections, etc daily. That is one thing Trestman and Kromer will no doubt have taken care of by the season opener.

You don't learn a whole offense during the voluntary workouts, not even half of it, the actual training camps and preseason will be the big bulk of to learn and work through, and even throughout the season there will be more and more added onto it. Some are looking like he will be SO FAR behind, but he will have only missed a small portion should he show up from the first mandatory OTAs on. Kromer will see in just 5-6 weeks of work if he thinks he can sculpt a solid lineman out of him.

I just find it funny some say they KNOW he will or won't be on the team or have a slot, but somehow Emery, Trestman, and Kromer don't. . We must have some prestigious posters here.

You really think as meticulous, thourough, and prepared Emery and Trestman are, that they don't have a real good idea in their head who the 53 are right now? And every rep Carimi misses right now, is another rep he's behind Slauson, Long, Brown, and Mills. He's changing positions on top of that. Its pretty clear he understands the writing is on the wall, which is why he's "holding out" of voluntary workouts.

I'm sure they know who the core of the squad will be, the top forty or so. The last 13 are up in the air subject to surprises and injuries.

With all the Linemen we brought in via free agency and the draft it seems to me that its going to be very hard for Carimi to make the team. Missing otas and more importantly reps will limit his chances significantly. I think it's only a matter of time till he's cut.

I would be pretty disappointed if they cut him this quickly. There are too many other options and ways to keep him to see if he fully recovers from his injury, IMO. If they cut him this year, it needs to be well down the road, if at all. There are many players, even at other positions, that I would rather see cut since they are known quantities at this point.

Raise your hand if you would not be disappointed if we got rid of him now and he went on to be a respectable player elsewhere.

Why? Why on earth do you want to hang on to him if the coaching staff is convinced he can't play and he's just a wasted roster spot at this point. If he goes on to be a great player for somebody else, oh well. I certainly don't second guess the Bears cutting Marc Columbo when he was never healthy, regardless of what he eventually turned into w/ Dallas. I wish Gabe well, but if he can't play, he can't play. And everytime I look at the Roster the same thing keeps proving true, there's no way Carimi can make this roster this year.

...because you don't cut a first round draft pick in the first round of cuts when his potential is unknown? Nowhere in my post did I say we should keep him if he cannot play. My argument is that we do not know whether or not he can play. That is NOT a determination that can be made TODAY, or before TC. Right now we have five guards (don't insult my intelligence by arguing that Garza is a guard...and JB is said to be competing with Webb at RT): Long, Slauson, Carimi, Williams, and Britton.

If you look at it from the team's view, Williams is most valuable due to his versatility unless something better comes along among the first round of cuts. Britton has about the same chance of making the roster as Carimi. I think you make that cut (or cuts) later in the off season since there is no way in hell to say whether or not Carimi can play WHEN HEALTHY.

His potential isn't unknown tho, what we've seen in the pros is the EXACT SAME THING we saw in college. He's EXTREMELY slow-footed, isn't a great athlete, has a real nice strong initial punch, but isn't a great technician. Will always give 100% effort, but against Elite players, his 100% isn't good enough. This is what I noted when I evaluated him and said BEFORE HE WAS DRAFTED I believed he would ultimately end up moving to OG b/c he couldn't handle the speed on the outside. His potential is a servicable OG. If Carimi had been drafted in the 2nd or 3rd round like he should have been based on tape and not being friends w/ Mike Tice's son, would you still be holding out hope for him? If the answer is no, then you need to admit to yourself its time to cut bait and move on.

Being friends with Mike Tice's son had nothing to do with him being drafted.

Well that's not true at all. How do we know it played a role w/ him being drafted in the first round by the Bears? Well, Mike Tice told us so right after we drafted him. He said he felt like he knew more about Carimi than any other OT in the draft b/c of his relationship w/ his son, and all the times he's watched Wisconsin b/c of his son. Teams were not faling over themselves trying to draft Gabe Carimi, the Bears not only drafted him, they tried to trade up to draft him earlier.

Carimi would have been a first round pick even if the Bears had not drafted him. Do you recall a mock in which he did not go in the first outside of yours perhaps?

He had played in an excellent program and there was little reason to believe he would not be a long term starter. Had he not been injured we might be singing a different song, most of us saw promise in his initial starts. Tice may well have liked the kid but virtually everyone did, so it had little bearing on Angelo's pick. We all knew more about him than other linemen just because of the proximity of Wisconsin to Chicago.

26th pick in the draft and you think its a foregone conclusion he for sure would have gone in the first? And your evidence is where mock drafts had him go? Sharrif Floyd was sure top 5 pick too huh? Or Duke Robinson a guaranteed first rounder? Mock drafts mean nothing. Carimi was overdrafted, and its funny that what I saw came to pass, and yet you seem to think that no other scout in the NFL saw the same thing. And no I didn't know more about Carimi than I did any other lineman in that draft, I knew more about Nate Solder. Why you ask? Well b/c Solder was a higher rated prospect.